For ‘Homeland’ Star Claire Danes, Mental Conditions Can Be Useful

Actors Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, and Morena Baccarin speak at the “Homeland” panel during the 2012 Summer Television Critics Association tour on July 30, 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

On Monday in Beverly Hills, Claire Danes looked poised as she talked about falling to pieces on screen. Wearing a bright red dress, she joined fellow actors and executive producers from the Showtime series “Homeland” on a panel at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. The first season of the psychological thriller won TCA’s award for best new show on Saturday and is nominated for three top Emmys, including best actress for Danes’s portrayal of a C.I.A. agent who stalks a returning prisoner of war she suspects of being turned toward terrorism during captivity.

Throughout season one, her character, Carrie Mathison, tried to hide the fact that she was bipolar. Her disorder contributed to flashes of insight about the rogue Marine (Damian Lewis), but eventually triggered a manic meltdown that got Carrie expelled from the C.I.A. and, in the season finale, forced her to seek electro-shock therapy that threatened to wipe her memory of a crucial discovery. On Monday, Danes said that following last season’s “crescendo of mania,” her character is still fragile, but stable at the start of season two (premiering Sept. 30). Carrie is working as an English teacher when she gets yanked unwillingly back into service. With a crisis in the Middle East boiling over, Carrie is sent to Beirut undercover to contact a former source.

When asked how last season’s mental collapse had changed her character, Danes said, “She’s confronting herself here and taking responsibility for herself in a more complete way. She probably did have some suspicion that maybe her condition was responsible for her genius. She will find a deeper confidence that she can tame it and remain as brilliant and forward thinking as she would like to be.”

In an interview following the “Homeland” panel, Danes compared her immersion into bipolar disorder with her exploration of autism in the HBO movie “Temple Grandin,” a 2010 biopic that earned a slew of awards for the actress’s portrayal of a woman whose fixation on cattle transformed slaughterhouse practices.

“Homeland” and “Temple Grandin,” she said, ” are very similar in that there’s a big message that [bipolar disorder and autism] are conditions, not necessarily diseases. I don’t want to be capricious about it, and everyone should seek treatment, but there are insights that a person with this kind of mind can have that are unusual and invaluable. It’s not a sentence or a punishment. It can also be put to good use by the individual.”

She credits the writers for not sensationalizing the conditions. “I like that about both of these stories. They’re not gimmicks. It’s not a tic. They’re a real part of who these characters are.”

In real life, Danes in the early stages of a more common condition: pregnancy. During the panel she fielded a few questions about how impending motherhood would affect production of “Homeland.” More than half of season two’s episodes have been shot, and Danes said pregnancy won’t slow her down as an actress. Nor will it be written into the show’s narrative. “All is well and Carrie remains fervently non-pregnant.”